Set Your Goals

07.01.2008 | Cam | 1 Comments

Having spent the better part of the year on the road, Set Your Goals are all set for their first trip to Australia as part of the 2008 Vans Boys Of Summer Tour.

Jordan took some time out of his band's hectic schedule to chat with us...

Interview w/ Jordan Brown (Vocals) of Set Your Goals

By Cameron Chambers

How are you man? 

Yeah good thanks Cameron. How are you? 

Yeah, great mate. Are you guys off tour at the moment? 

Yes we are. We’ve actually been home for a couple of months now so we’ve just been working on some songs and just taking a break from tour. 

What else has been keeping you busy? 

We just shot a video for our song “Echoes” which has been a year in the making! We worked in conjunction with the music foundation to fund raise along with our tee shirt design and it turned out great! It was a benefit to their organization and our video! 

It's been a pretty crazy year for the band, what have been some of the highlights? 

The highlights have definitely been the Warped Tour this summer, which was awesome! We also did a couple of months in Europe with our friends No Trigger! It was our first real out of the US experiences but really, we’ve done so much cool stuff! 

We also got to do a local show with Lifetime which actually kicked off our year but overall, the amount of touring we’ve done this year has been great! 

Touring with New Found Glory and Paramore must've been a fair step as far as venue sizes etc... Did you guys approach those shows any differently to a regular Set Your Goals gig? 

We pretty much wanted to play more… well, a lot of the people on the Paramore tour hadn’t heard the band before, so we wanted to show them what we’re all about but at the same time, we wanted to show our old fans that we really appreciate them coming out and supporting us!  

Our long term fans really help us to get other people into it. There’s a lot of crowd interaction and we had a lot of time to tell the audience what the band and the tour is all about and hopefully we were able to get some more people into the band!  

Eulogy Records is known for churning out bands that lean towards the heavier end of the musical spectrum. What made you guys sign with them as opposed to going with a more pop punk friendly label? 

I think it’s because we were so rooted in the hardcore scene as far as all our contacts and friends etc… It was just the right fit for us at the time.  

We hadn’t gained much interest from many pop punk labels at the time so I guess that was the main thing.  

Do you guys still get to play with heavier bands or have you found that your increasing popularity means you're touring with groups who are more similar to yourselves? 

I think we’re always able to go back and forth and play all kinds of shows. Recently we’ve been playing with our friends Daggermouth and they’re pretty similar… they’re a melodic hardcore band in the vein of Lifetime and The Movielife. 

We did a Less Than Jake tour last fall and then we went straight into a tour with Terror! We love doing stuff like that… we like being able to tour with so many different bands! 

We try and pursue every tour offer that we get… every once in a while we have to turn tours down but it’s never been because the band didn’t sound like us or anything like that.  

“Mutiny” has been out since August 2006, when can we expect a new Set Your Goals record? 

Hopefully we’ll have it done by the fall of 2008. We’re doing Warped Tour this summer so we’re hoping to record a bit before we leave for that so we’ll have some songs ready for the tour! 

But yeah, we’re hoping the record will be done by fall 2008.  

Are the new songs in a similar vein to “Mutiny” or are you expanding your sound a little bit? 

Well, the more hardcore songs will be more hardcore and the pop punk tracks will be more pop punk! It definitely sounds like Set Your Goals but we’ll step the lyrics up. 

I feel like the last two years has been the busiest two years of my life so we’ve got plenty to write about.  

Will Eulogy be releasing your next album? 

As of right now, yes. We met with them a couple of months ago and we’re working out a few things. Our relationship went really sour with them but right now things are good. 

They’re signing a new distribution deal which will make the record more accessible because I know people have had a lot of trouble finding it.  

You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but it seems as though a lot of bands don’t have many positive things to say about Eulogy. Care to comment on that?  

Yeah, I’m more than happy to talk about that, ha ha. 

Ha ha, go for it man.  

That label has had its ups and downs with the entire roster… I don’t think that they were aware of what they were getting in to when they signed so many bands. 

Bands want to have a place… every band wants and deserves their own attention and sometimes the label can’t cater to that. For example, On Broken Wings asked for tour support when Set Your Goals signed and the label said they couldn’t do it because they were pumping their money into Set Your Goals… which isn’t fair for anyone! 

They definitely like putting the blame onto someone else…  

In a couple of weeks you guys will be kicking off your first Australian tour with Silverstein. What can we expect from a Set Your Goals show? 

Lots of intensity and interaction! Anyone that’s familiar with our EP or our record should come and sing-a-long and come up front! I don’t know if the venues have barriers but just pretend that it’s not there. 

We’re out there with you guys!  

The Boys Of Summer Tour has a really diverse line up, have you had to deal with winning over potentially un-interested crowds before? 

We have actually. We did the Anti Flag tour this spring… and everyone on the tour was so great but there were a few nights where you’d be getting the middle finger and people saying “what’s this pop bullshit”? 

We actually covered an Operation Ivy song on that tour and I swear to God… every kid who heckled would walk away during that song, and we were like “before you call us out, how bout you explore your roots”, ha ha? 

Are you familiar with much Australian music? 

I’m actually not, but I’m looking forward to finding out about it and seeing what your whole scene is like down there! 

After months of build up your video for “Echoes” was shot over the weekend. Are you happy with how the shoot turned out and are you able to tell us anything about the clip itself? 

Yeah, for sure man! I’d love to talk about it! Can I give you a website address? 

Go for it man. 

It’s www.sjkimphotography.comechoes and if you go there you’ll be able to see the production stills from the second day of shooting. There’s heaps of crew shows man… everyone who worked on the video didn’t pocket a cent either! 

They were either students or people who really believed in the song and the band. It was such a cool bonding experience because it’s a very personal song about death and what you go through when you lose someone close to you.  

As for the video itself, there are people who are trapped in rooms and they don’t know how they got there. They’re scared and they are tearing away the walls and they see news print… we cut out actual obituaries for that part, and then the people realize that they’ve passed on.  

Then they accept it and move on and that’s kind of symbolic of what you’d go through when someone passes.  

The final are the band in the performance room and there’s this really bright light at the end of the tunnel and it’s getting closer to the room. Finally, the big, white light fills the room and it ends the video. 

It’s a really stylistic take on the whole process and we actually got our family and friends to hold up pictures of real people so we got some really cool shots! 

The funds for the clip were raised by a special one off merch design that you guys have been selling on Merchnow. That’s a pretty unique way to pay for a video, who came up with the idea? 

It was actually the entire band man. This film company sent us an email saying they wanted to work with us but unfortunately our label wouldn’t give us any money for another video. 

So we sat down and said we should have a band bake sale as a form of raising money, ha ha. We tossed around a few ideas and decided that we wanted to give some of the money to charity… something like the Cancer Research Foundation or something that was close to our families. 

It was Mikey’s idea and it just took off from there! 

What have been your top 5 records for 2007? 

I’ve got a few but I’d say my top records were: 

Crime In Stereo – Is Dead… which came out on Bridge Nine records.  

Ambitions – Neon Lights. 

The Starting Line’s new record… we did a tour with them in the fall and I’m loving that record! 

Katie Tunstall’s record just for something different and I’ll have to plug the new Saves The Day record.  

If you could take any 3 bands on tour with Set Your Goals, who would it be and why? 

Right now… it’s tough to narrow it down to three.  

A band from Detroit called Fireworks. They’re really good friends of ours and they’re approaching it the right way… just getting on tour and connecting with fans! 

2*Sweet from Chicago… I think it’s the name of a WWF wrestler, ha ha. Check them out at www.myspace.com/2sweet. They’re also in our top friends on our MySpace page.  

That about wraps it up Jordan, is there anything else you'd like to say? 

Uh, nope. Thanks for plugging the “Echoes” video man. This is the first interview where anyone really knew what was going on with the video, so we really appreciate it!